In chapter 3 the Sabbath issues continue and the healings draw larger crowds to hear him preach. Then we have his listing of the disciples and where Matthew listed the sets of fishing brothers together, here notice Andrew is not with Peter, James and John ( the top three we will see later) but he comes listed fourth and next to Philip where we will see a real connection in the forth gospel.
And just as we saw a strong word in chapter one to describe how the Holy Spirit forced Jesus into the wilderness, here we see strong words in a story we hear about Mary and other relatives wanting to see Jesus, but it reads a little differently here than we often remember. Here "they come to take control of him" with a description, "He's out of his mind!" in verse 21. And then after another teaching we read in Matthew we hear in verse 31 and following the more benign story of Mary and family coming and only that Jesus affirms all who do God's will are his family.
In chapter 4 we read again the parable of the soils and the explanation of why he preaches in this manner and what this parable means similar to what we had in Matthew without the OT reference. Then he teachers other parables about the kingdom like we read in Matthew, but the story of the boat ride is slightly different. Matthew actually condenses this story taking some of Jesus' quotes out of the retelling of the story. Though it ends with the reader getting the same sense from those in the boat asking who can Jesus be who is obeyed by the seas and winds. A good question - who is he for you? How is Jesus at calming the storms and troubles in your life?
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